Movie columnist / Podcast and video production

When I went to the dollar store last week, my eyes immediately locked on to a display of rubber hands and feet sealed in plastic bags. My heart skipped a beat, my blood rushed and my mouth fell open, but not because I momentarily thought I’d seen actual severed appendages. Remember that house in your neighborhood that always took things a little too far every Halloween? Full disclosure: That was us. Don’t let my clean-cut exterior fool you — my insides are full of cheap plastic skulls and red-eyed toy vampire bats, and I have no problem admitting it. To this day, the closer it gets to October, the more uncontrollably giddy I become, and my parents are completely to blame.

“The Addams Family” has gone through a few different incarnations since its 1938 debut as a single-panel cartoon in The New Yorker, most notably as a live-action TV show in the mid-1960s and a pair of feature films in the early ’90s (“Scooby-Doo” fans will remember their appearances as animated characters courtesy of Hanna-Barbara). Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Grandmama, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Cousin Itt and Thing filled their creepy old mansion with undead life, slinging humor dark enough to make Count Dracula ask for a flashlight. They made the frightening funny, the scary satirical and the terrifying tickle, winking and smiling as they pulled open the trap door to the dungeon.

The new Broadway musical version of “The Addams Family” manages to bring the humor and characters up to date without changing a thing (literally). Under the supervision of producer Jerry Zaks, the bizarre and beautiful stage show celebrates the virtues of love among the weird. Now in her late teens, daughter Wednesday (Cortney Wolfson) has fallen hard for young Lucas (Brian Justin Crum) — a nice, normal kid — and has asked her folks for “one normal night” so the two families can meet. Entrusted with a romantic secret, Gomez (Douglas Sills) must keep up appearances with his beloved Morticia (Sara Gettelfinger) as she becomes more and more suspicious and frustrated. Meanwhile, Pugsley schemes to use one of Grandmama’s special potions to cause havoc at dinner, and Lucas’s parents (Martin Vidnovic and Gaelen Gilliland) endure a spooky sensory overload upon their arrival at the Addams estate.

It wouldn’t be a true “Addams Family” affair without something really freaky happening, and that moment comes via my favorite character, Uncle Fester (Blake Hammond). Professing his love for the moon itself, the lovable, bald-headed ghoul serenades his sweetheart in a gorgeously surreal number right out of a Georges Méliès film. As Fester sings and dances his way through the night sky, his legs bouncing and bending like something out of a dream (or nightmare), a chorus of flowery neon nymphs support him from the ground below. In a show teeming with whip-smart dialog, well-choreographed corpses and gothic sets that stretch up toward infinity, it’s a standout sequence that is decidedly off-kilter even in context.

We love the Addams Family because they’re a reflection of our own feelings about ourselves and our relatives — it’s not hard to relate to Wednesday’s teenage angst and embarrassment. But for me, it’s the giant spiders and Lurch’s guttural zombie giggles that conjure up wistful family memories of autumns past. Own your weirdness, embrace your eccentricity, and you might find yourself sharing a graveyard tango with your sweetheart by the next full moon.

“The Addams Family” will be playing at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre through Sunday. For more information on the musical, visit theaddamsfamilymusicaltour.com.